


Sentence

by hafren



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-21
Updated: 2009-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 11:46:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hafren/pseuds/hafren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stone walls do not a prison make. But guilt does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sentence

**Author's Note:**

> "And Jacob served for Rachel seven years, and they seemed to him but a few days" - Book of Genesis

The cell consisted of a tiny washroom opening off a room only slightly larger. There was no furniture in this room except a mattress on the floor, a blanket and two shelves. On the lower shelf lay a pile of clothing, neatly folded. On the upper shelf was a book.

A buzzer on the wall sounded, a harsh, grating demand, and the man under the blanket stirred and woke. The blanket, like the mattress, was thin, but it didn't really matter because the cell was warm. He lay for a few moments, adjusting to wakefulness. Then the buzzer sounded again, and he got up at once. He washed and dressed quickly and silently, then took the book from the shelf and sat on the mattress to read. This was the only time he would have until late evening, and he needed the words in his head to last him through the day. He opened the book at random.

"And the proud girl turned into a little bird, which flew here and there collecting crumbs, and giving them to the other birds. Wherever any kind person had left out bread, the little bird ate a crumb herself and gave the rest away. And this she did all through the hard winter, until the crumbs she had given away equalled the weight of the loaf which, when she was a girl, she had trodden into the mud. Then she took wing and flew away, no-one could tell where, but some said she flew straight into the sun."

The buzzer sounded once more. He put the book back and walked out of the cell. The door had no lock; there was nothing to keep him in there.

He walked down corridors, toward the sound of quiet conversation and clattering dishes, to the back door of a large canteen kitchen. He went in and stood in silence, watching the cooks prepare breakfast for the base personnel. By and by, someone noticed him and handed him a bowl, careful not to touch his hand. He bowed his head in token of thanks. Nobody spoke. It was understood: nobody on the base touched or spoke to him except when absolutely necessary and he himself could speak only with permission.

The bowl contained some sort of porridge-like concentrate. He didn't know what it was exactly - there was no taste to give a clue - but it was filling and he knew it must be very nutritious. He was fed once a day, and it sustained him through about ten hours of work.

When the bowl was empty he handed it back and walked down another corridor, to the ops room. This was where everyone gathered each morning to find out what needed doing; he could hear the chat and laughter before he went in. Nobody noticed his arrival. They were used to the silent presence standing pressed against the wall, waiting.

Blake was sorting out work assignments. He had a word for everyone, or a squeeze of the shoulder, or a warm smile. Whatever sort of a wreck the years had made of his face, they hadn't taken the fun and enthusiasm out of it. Or the comradeship and trust. It took a long time before everyone else was sorted and Blake turned to the waiting man, as if he'd only just recalled that he was there.

"Ah, Avon. Go and report to maintenance. Einar claims he's short-handed."

The tone was not harsh; it wasn't anything. It was completely neutral, like the look in Blake's eyes. Avon turned and left.

Maintenance was quite good news. It might have been the communications centre. Granted, that was indoors and warm, but monitoring Federation transmissions for hours was mind-numbing, because although most of them were routine and irrelevant, he dared not let his attention wander in case he missed one that mattered. When he was labouring his mind was free, and he could comfort himself with the words of the book he knew by heart.

"I sleep beneath the Tree of Knowledge, but if you kiss me, the Garden of Paradise will sink deep down into the earth and be lost to you. But if you can only resist for a hundred years, it will be yours forever..."

When he found the maintenance manager, a couple of labourers were arguing with him. "It's a hell of a big area, boss, it'll take for ever to clear it with just the two of us."

"I know, I know. But I can't spare anyone else." He caught sight of Avon. "Oh great, another pair of hands. Get him a shovel and take him with you. I want it cleared and treated by nightfall."

They were working above ground, clearing a heavy overnight snowfall from a landing strip. Though it was freezing, they were soon warm with the exertion of heaving shovel-loads of snow aside. There was ice too, which had to be chipped carefully away from the runway lights with a blade.

After some hours, one of them called a dinner break. They went indoors and the other two ate and chatted. He drank the water he was given and read the book in his mind. Only now did he notice how numbed his feet had become; as they thawed out, they felt as if they were being stabbed with hot needles.

"And the witch said "I can give you feet instead of a tail, but every step you take on them will be like treading on knives". But this the little mermaid was ready to do, in order to win the love of a human being and gain an immortal soul."

When he had first seen that it was a book of fairy tales, he had put it aside in disbelief. But it was the only book he had; soon enough, on some long evening in his cell, he picked it up again. Now he could not have lived without it. It was his hope. Over and over in it, someone was tested. A prince had to resist kissing a woman for a hundred years; a suitor had to perform task after task, a girl had to sew shirts of nettles to turn her swan-brothers back into men, and must not speak until she did. If they failed just once, all was lost.

But if they trusted that one day the tests would be over, there would be a happy ending. And though they did wrong and suffered, there could be atonement. The proud girl who trod a loaf into the mud to keep her shoes clean became a stone statue in hell until her name was a legend to frighten children with. "But when at last she wept for the pride and hardness of her life, the stone melted and a bird flew into the air..." And there was Karen, who left her mother's deathbed to go to a ball. Her red shoes would not stop dancing, nor leave her feet; she would have died of exhaustion had she not found a terrible remedy. Yet she too had been forgiven in the end.

He did not think he had been given the book by accident, nor allowed to hope for forgiveness which would never come. He did not know the term of his sentence, and would not ask. That would be to fail in trust, and that he must never do again. He would question nothing, accept whatever happened to him, pass however many tests he had to. If Blake told him to stand still and be fired at, he would do it as willingly as Karen had stretched out her feet to the axe.

Soon enough, they went out to start work again. Every so often, chipping away at the lights, their hands slipped and were cut on the ice. The other two cursed good-humouredly, but he had learned to bite it back. "She crushed the nettles with her bare hands and feet and twisted them into flax; they burned like fire but she could not cry out, for her brothers' lives depended on it."

It was dark before they finished. Back underground, Blake was holding his nightly revolutionary council with his inner circle. Avon was required to attend these, sitting quietly against a wall a long way from Blake. It was as if Blake didn't want him to get out of touch with how the rebellion was going, another thing that gave him hope. But it was painful, watching the warmth and closeness of the little group, knowing he did not deserve to share it. "I do not need you," he had said once, "I do not need any of you."

Vila got up to fetch something, passed close to him and brushed his hand imperceptibly with a fingertip. Any chance he got, he would give the man who'd tried to murder him this undeserved gift of a few seconds' human contact. It made Avon feel like the stone statue in hell that ached when anyone on earth wept for it. Maybe if he could cry, and melt the stone...

Back in his cell, he read into the night. The mermaid had let the witch cut out her tongue in exchange for giving her a human form; mute and in pain she must earn the love of a human being who barely noticed she was there, or dissolve into foam on the sea.

The door opened, and Blake walked in.

This was unprecedented. Avon leapt up and dropped the book, wondering what he had done wrong. Blake put a hand on his shoulder: after so long without touch, the contact felt almost electric. "It's all right," Blake said. He gestured Avon to sit on the bed, and sat down beside him.

"Do you know how long you have been here?" Blake asked.

"A year."

"Nearly right. A year and a day."

A year and a day. It wouldn't have meant anything to him before he read the book. But he knew now. It was one of those terms, like a hundred years. The time they give you to complete the test... His heart felt like a bird bruising itself against the cage bars and he began to overbreathe.

"Easy, now." Blake cupped his hands over Avon's nose and mouth. "Breathe into that."

He did, getting back the carbon dioxide he was losing too fast, until his breathing quietened. Blake's hands left his face and he leaned forward, with an inarticulate little sound, longing for the contact back. Blake took him by the shoulders and searched his face, then drew him close.

The cage inside him dissolved like snow in sunlight and the bird fluttered up to his lips. He blotted his eyes on Blake's chest and said huskily "I'm sorry".

"I know." Blake stroked his hair, spoke into it. "I forgive you."

"It flew away." His heart was hammering so loud he could hear it in his head. "They say it flew into the sun." He thought he could see it, the little white shape swallowed in light, just before the room swirled and went blank.

***

When the buzzer woke him next morning, he was at first at a loss to explain the joy he felt. And when memory came back, his heart sank: what if he had dreamed it? He had a vague recollection of having passed out. Of coming round, terrified that Blake would be gone, and finding him still there. Of being settled back into the bed and told to sleep. But all that could still be a dream. He dreamed often, though usually in the dreams Blake was dead. He looked around the cell. The book was not in its usual place on the shelf; when he saw it still lying on the floor, he knew it hadn't been a dream.

He washed and dressed, singing under his breath, and put the book carefully back, caressing it with his fingertips. With a lighter step than he had used for months, he walked down to the kitchen and ate the concentrated mush, grateful for its comforting warmth, now that he might never taste it again. Then he went to the ops room and sat quietly, as usual, waiting until Blake had time for him. He watched him assigning tasks, seeing him churn his fingers through his hair, hearing the warm rumble of his voice, wondering how he could ever have tried to erase all this from the world. When at last everyone else was gone, he jumped up and ran towards Blake, arms outstretched, saying his name.

Blake warded him off and said "Communications centre. You will be monitoring transmissions today. And I didn't give you permission to speak."

Avon stood rooted, blood draining from his face.

"Three shots", Blake said softly, implacably. "And since with each I posed less of a threat to you, each was twice as criminal as the one before. I forgave you the first one last night."

Avon did the maths. Two years two days for the second, four and four the third. He wondered inconsequentially if there were any folk tales where someone had to serve seven years: there must be. He bowed his head silently and walked off to the communications centre, grateful for the gift of knowing at last what his term was.

When he returned to his cell, late at night, the book was gone. So was the heating. He guessed that in another two years and two days the thin blanket and mattress would join them. No, it was two years and one day now, already a little less, and in the cold cell the thought gave him a moment of warmth. What four years of sleeping on the floor would do to his back, he didn't like to think. Maybe he should practise now, so that it didn't come as so much of a shock.... No. It was meant to.

He missed the feel of the book in his hand, but he knew he didn't really need it any more. They were all in his head, the girl's hands burning with her chain-mail of nettles, the man who must wait a hundred years for a kiss, the bird collecting its crumbs of charity, the mermaid whose salvation depended on earning the love of a human being.

He hugged the blanket around him, treasuring it while he had it, and remembered what else would happen in two years and one day from now, and then again in an unimaginable four years more. He knew Blake's sense of justice: if the sentence was harsher the forgiveness would be in proportion to it. The flicker of warmth in his shivering body became a candle, a faint sun in the distance, the promise of light rather than the thing itself. He could live on that.


End file.
